1976: Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli among Hawai‘i’s ‘Kaho‘olawe Nine’

Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli is one of four Native Hawaiian doctors who graduated in the first class of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine. He joins protesters against the U.S. Navy’s use of Kaho‘olawe Island, a sacred site for Native Hawaiians, for military training and target practice since World War II. The Kaho‘olawe Nine set sail in a boat from Maui, landing on Kaho‘olawe while a Coast Guard cutter waits offshore. Most of them are quickly arrested; Aluli and Walter Ritte spend two days hiking before the Coast Guard finds and arrests them.

Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli, who works in a family practice on Moloka‘i, says that Hawaiian tradition teaches that Native Hawaiians are descended from nature gods, and so in order to heal Native Hawaiians, he works to heal the Hawaiian Islands.